The vintage irreverent examine the past—now up to date with much more appalling evidence!

Fourteen billion or so years in the past, the massive Bang exploded—and it's been downhill from there. for each brilliant discovery all through background, there were hundreds and hundreds of devastating epidemics; for each benevolent despot, 1000 like Vlad the Impaler; for each cup half-full, a bigger cup half-empty. This enchanting, enlightening, and devilishly exciting chronicle of failures and dastardly deeds brings to mild the darkest occasions in background and the main abysmal calamities to strike the planet . . . to date.

In 2006, the U. S. Marines formally turned a part of the U. S. distinct Operations Command (SOCOM) with the construction of the Marine targeted Operations Command (MARSOC). Drawn from the ranks of the strength Recon businesses, those hugely expert and combat-proven Leathernecks could take the conflict to al Qaeda and the Taliban in America’s international warfare on terrorism. MARSOC is steeped within the background of the Marine Raiders of global conflict II, strength Reconnaissance businesses of Vietnam, and Detachment-One, which stood up after the assaults on Sept. 11. Their venture is to win wars prior to they start, taking the war past front line. whilst the USA desires to demonstrate its may well, the Commander in leader will ship within the Marines. With the construction of MARSOC, likelihood is they're already there.

The 1st international conflict within the Mediterranean represented greater than only a peripheral theatre to the conflict at the western entrance. This enticing quantity comprises information of allied makes an attempt to trap Constantinople; bloody campaigning in Northern Italy; the defence of the Suez Canal and the defeat of the Turkish military in Palestine.

On 10 December 1941, the Royal army battleship HMS Prince of Wales was once sunk by way of jap bombers within the South China Sea. among the various hundred males who went down together with her used to be her Captain, John Leach, who had fought opposed to frightful odds and to the very finish made the easiest of an very unlikely state of affairs with braveness and tranquility.

Additional resources for The Pessimist's Guide to History: An Irresistible Compendium of Catastrophes, Barbarities, Massacres, and Mayhem - from 14 Billion Years Ago to 2007

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In one case, Titus crucified five hundred prisoners and sent still others back into the city after cutting off their hands. But the Jews continued to resist. Then famine overtook the besieged city. Starving, people ate grass, bits of leather, anything. Gangs roamed the streets, breaking into homes in search of food or eating horrid refuse from the streets. ” In one horrible case, a woman killed her own baby to eat its body. Unburied corpses littered the streets. Still, the Jews would not surrender their city.

His armies sacked and pillaged their way across Asia, creating an empire that stretched from the Pacific to the Black Sea. The Mongols were little disturbed by the wholesale slaughter they used to gain their objectives. 6 million people. When Genghis conquered Bokhara in 1218, 160,000 of Shah Mohammad’s troops were killed. “I will carry slaughter and cause devastation to my enemy . . so my name will live,” Genghis once said. His very existence terrified his subjects and no doubt discouraged attempts at rebellion.

When the plague finally abated in 1351, an estimated twenty-five million people had died in Europe. About one third of the world’s population had succumbed. No one was spared, not royalty or nobles, church officials or whole friaries, artisans or patrons of the arts, or Petrarch’s Laura. It was the most devastating disaster ever visited on the Western world, and consequently changed European society for the better and for worse. 1347: Saint Vitus’ Dance Epidemic. In the fourteenth cen- tury a bizarre disease appeared in Europe, in which people would begin a twitching, ungainly dance that soon led to uncontrollable leaping, furious screaming, and foaming at the mouth.